Man Convicted of Killing Girlfriend and Her Daughter, as ‘Witches’

A Queens man was convicted on Wednesday of bludgeoning his girlfriend and her daughter to death with a hammer in 2014 because he believed they were witches who had cast voodoo spells on him.

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Lina Castaneda in an undated photo from Facebook. She was found dead on the floor of her bedroom but her 7-year-old daughter was unharmed. Her mother, Estrella Castaneda, was also killed.

The man, Carlos Amarillo, fatally beat his girlfriend, Estrella Castaneda, 56, in her bed and killed her daughter, Lina Castaneda, 25, on the floor of her bedroom in the back of their house on 87th Street in East Elmhurst. The police found the younger woman’s 7-year-old daughter unharmed on the bed next to her mother and the hammer on the floor next to Lina Castaneda’s body.

After a two-week trial, a jury in Queens Supreme Court found Mr. Amarillo, 48, guilty on two counts of first-degree murder. He could receive life in prison without parole when he is sentenced on July 7.

Early on the morning of Jan. 29, 2014, Mr. Amarillo called 911 and told an operator what he had done. “They were assassinated, hurry they are dead,” he said. “I killed them because they are witches.”

Officers found Mr. Amarillo walking from the home’s front door to the street, clutching a Bible and muttering, “I killed them. I killed them.” He told the police that the women had been witches who had made him sick by “performing voodoo and casting spells.”

In a statement, Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, expressed his thanks that Lina Castaneda’s young daughter had not been harmed.

“She will, however, be forever impacted by the absence of both her mother and grandmother in her life,” he said.